We are creating a simple plugin and envisioned the following structure:

A Gadget for inclusion on any page

A Special page from which the gadget can update its content (via AJAX calls)

The problem is that the Special page always appears themed with all the surrounding HTML to make it look nice. But in this case, we need to return only the JSON response for use by the gadget, without any formatting.

Is it possible to make a Special page be "blank" so that it renders only plaintext content?

Edit: It appears that adding "die();" to the Special page yields the output in plaintext, but is this approach undesirable for some reason?